


Offers

by shouldbeover



Series: The Man No One Liked Universe [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Adultery, Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 16:45:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shouldbeover/pseuds/shouldbeover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>TMNOL Universe - 1928</p>
<p>Sherlock spends the evening with Prince George (Future Duke of Kent)</p>
<p>(Please see historical notes at the end for details)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Offers

"That was a truly awful play!” Sherlock leaned his head back and blew cigarette smoke towards the ceiling.

“Horrific,” the younger man agreed.

“And the ingénue! Forty-five if she was a day.”

His Royal Highness Prince George of Wales leaned over to pour more whiskey into Sherlock’s glass. “She’s sleeping with the theater owner.”

“Ah,” Sherlock took a swig. “Is the playwright sleeping with the theater owner as well? ‘Look, there is a gun! What shall we do with the body?’” He shook his head in despair. “Dreadful.

“This whiskey however,” he continued, swirling the liquor in its glass, “is divine.”

“It should be. My uncle laid it down…,” George peered at the bottle, “fifty years ago.”

Sherlock raised a mock toast to George’s princely ancestor. “Why did we go again? Ah, yes. They sent me an invitation.”

“They thought having the great detective Sherlock Holmes in the audience would give the play a stamp of approval.”

Sherlock snorted. “That wasn’t a murder mystery. It was a massacre of taste.”

The two men sat on plush settees on either side of a low table in a private room of Buckingham Palace. Their bowties were undone, hanging loose around their necks, top buttons of their dress shirts open, feet propped up on the table. The fire in the giant fireplace was high and jazz was playing softly on the phonograph.

Sherlock felt warm and completely relaxed for the first time in months. “And you? Wouldn’t having a prince in the audience do just as well?”

George gave a self-deprecating smile, “Oh, I’m hardly worth the ticket price; just a minor royal.

“The odds of my becoming King are…well, perhaps a genius like you could calculate the odds, but very low. And anyway, David and I are the black sheep. Bertie, Mary and Harry are the golden ones. Father wishes David wasn’t the eldest, I know it. David knows it too. Especially with Bertie having little Lilibet now. Poor old Bertie would absolutely hate being King, but at least he’s done his royal duty.”

Sherlock rose unsteadily—they had escaped the theater at the first intermission, and a late meal had been accompanied by wine and champagne and now there was the whiskey—and walked to the fireplace. He lit a new cigarette from the old one and flung the butt into the fire. Although the room was warm, facing the blaze made his back feel cold by comparison. The Prince joined him to gaze into the flames.

Prince George was taller than John but still shorter than Sherlock. He turned and his gaze rested at the level of Sherlock’s chest. “My brother gave you those shirt studs, didn’t he?”

Sherlock looked down at the grey pearl studs adorning his shirtfront. “Yes. With the gratitude of the British Empire.”

George grinned, “Surely you received medals for that.

“True, but I can’t wear those in public since I was never officially working for the government.”

“You know, grey pearls are a particular favorite of my brother’s. For his particular favorites.”

Sherlock tilted his head back exposing his throat to the warmth. “I’m not your brother’s type.” He paused and then smirked, “I’m not married.”

“Too true. Not at all David’s type. Married women are tigers in bed. They don’t have to pretend that they don’t like it; that you’re overcoming their maidenly virtue.” George stepped closer.

“I wouldn’t know,” Sherlock looked down into the shorter man’s eyes. He lowered his voice. He told himself it was because they were so close.

“Do I have to overcome your…maidenly virtue?” George whispered.

“Your Majesty—” Sherlock started, but George cut him off.

“You’re gorgeous you know. Delicious, and brilliant and gorgeous.” George took Sherlock’s cigarette right from his mouth and took a drag. They were very close now. He ran his finger down Sherlock’s chest zigzagging around the pearls. “Go to bed with me. You know that I want you. Have wanted you since I first met you. You read everyone and everything, so of course you know that. And you’re so…unobtainable. I know men who would gladly pay for the privilege of sucking your cock.”

Sherlock shut his eyes at the surprising crudity, but he didn’t pull away.

The alcohol was dulling his senses, lowering his inhibitions, and even if he were sober he wasn’t quite sure that the Prince’s advances would be unwelcome.

John didn’t like him going out with either Prince Edward, David to his friends, or Prince George. Felt they were a bad influence with their nightclubs, their lovers and their drinking. And their drugs.

But John wasn’t here. John was home in bed with a bad cold. And lately John hadn’t liked anything Sherlock did, not since Newcastle six months before.

He felt old. There were grey threads in his black hair, although it remained as full and unruly as ever, and more lines across his forehead and around his mouth. He still ran across London rooftops but he was slowing down, perhaps dangerously so, and his joints ached when he reached home again. The interest of a handsome man fifteen years his junior was…flattering? Exhilarating? Arousing?

The Prince went on. “Become my lover, Sherlock. I could take you anywhere in the world. You could work with the finest minds in the most interesting cities: Singapore, Hong Kong, Berlin. I could show you everything, give you anything.”

Sherlock tilted his head to one side and leant in towards George but didn’t quite touch. “I like London. My work is here. My life is here.”

“Ah. Your life. And your life doesn’t share?”

It was so tempting. Fifteen years. He and John had been together for fifteen years. He never thought that he’d be the kind of person that could do that, have sex with just one person all of his life. It was such a little thing, sex. Not love, just sex. Sex with this young, handsome, witty and intelligent man. George smelled of Chesterfield’s, a rich sandalwood aftershave and the whisky. Their lips were a half an inch apart. John need never know if he was careful. He felt flushed and reckless. The record had stopped and the needle made clicking noises against the label.

“Maybe it’s me,” he said. “Maybe I don’t share.” And there it was. The moment passed. George gave a rueful smile and went to change the record.

“So you are with the little doctor,” George said as he moved away. “I was never sure. Or never sure that it was exclusive.”

“John is…I owe him everything.”

“Gratitude isn’t a good basis for a relationship.”

“But isn’t that what you’re offering me? To be kept?” Sherlock walked back to sit down. Now he felt overheated, aware of a sheen of perspiration on his forehead. He wondered if he would ever be invited back to Buckingham Palace now.

“Kept seems to imply that it’s a sort of business transaction. You wound me.” George made a show of being pierced through the heart and collapsing onto his sofa, then laughed. “Don’t worry, Sherlock. I’m not one of my ancestors. I’m not going to send you to the Tower or banish you. If I did that to everyone who rebuffed my advances… Well, let’s just say that London society would be somewhat reduced.

“I don’t believe that. I’ve heard that you’re very successful both in drawing rooms and out.”

“By flatterers besieged, and so obliging that he ne’er obliged!”* He lit another cigarette and pushed the box towards Sherlock. “Come work with me. I’m joining the Foreign Office when I leave the Navy next year.” He held up his hands, “Just work. Don’t you miss it? The chance to do work of real importance again?”

“I do work of importance.”

“Solving petty crime?”

“Not always petty.”

“I know about Newcastle. I’ve read the reports.”

Sherlock paused in the act of lighting his cigarette. “Oh?” His voice was cold.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“That’s not what John thought. I was arrogant. People died.”

The Prince nodded, “Does it bother you when John doesn’t understand? Does he know what you did during the war?”

“Official secrets. I don’t want to burden him. I didn’t kill anyone.”

“No. But you still can’t tell him.”

“No.”

“You wouldn’t have to keep secrets with me.” George’s voice was low, seductive again.

“Give me time to consider it. The job offer.”

The Prince tilted his head down in surrender then suddenly brightened. “Do you know what we need? Candy! I always need candy after I’m rejected.” He went and pulled a leather box from the cabinet beneath the phonograph. Sherlock recognized the box, or rather its type because John had one.

The Prince set the leather covered box on the table and opened it. Two glass and metal syringes were strapped into the lid. A rubber tourniquet was coiled in one compartment and the rest were filled with different glass bottles.

“What’s your poison?” George asked. “Do you fly, float or fall?”

“I… A very long time ago I had a taste for cocaine. Morphia briefly after the war.”

“Hmm,” murmured George as he pulled out bottles. “Have you ever tried them together?”

“They would work against one another.”

“They counteract one another. You’re flying without all the side effects.” His eyes gleamed as he rolled up his sleeve. “Care to try?”

This too was a step away from John. John never knew about the cocaine and he had weaned Sherlock from the morphine. “Of course,” he smiled and started to roll up his sleeve.

The Prince was an expert. After applying the tourniquet he easily found a vein in Sherlock’s arm. Rather than pushing the plunger in all the way at once, he pushed it in a little way and then pulled it out, depressed it, pulled it out, pushed it in, in a steady rhythm, a little more of Sherlock’s blood swirling up into the barrel each time.

The cocaine hit first in a growing pulse in time with each push of needle that made Sherlock arch his back and moan as if in the throes of orgasm. He could feel the cocaine burn along his vein, heating his blood, making him tremble with the searing, flying sensation as his heart raced. Beneath it was the new, slower glow of the morphine, pulling him down into a rolling euphoria that made his head loll from side to side in pleasure. There was nothing that matched this. His brain felt like a finely tuned engine, like a Rolls Royce, everything moving in perfect harmony. He could see the solution to any problem as clearly as he could see notes on a score as he played his violin.

But all too soon the perfect clarity of the cocaine started to fade, his heart slowing down, sinking into morphine’s languor, into Morpheus’ arms. Everything faded, his senses becoming muffled as if he was wearing a gas max…

And suddenly he was coming back to wakefulness too fast, his heart and lungs screaming in protest. He gasped and then coughed violently. Prince George was leaning across his chest shouting ‘Breathe, breathe, Sherlock, damn it!’

He looked down at the needle still caught on the skin of his chest. “Adrenaline?” then, “I’m going to be sick.” The Prince scrambled to hand him the ice bucket where he was violently ill. When he lay back on the sofa he thought of the poor maid who would have to clean it.

George used a handkerchief wet with seltzer to clean Sherlock up. “My God, I’m sorry, Sherlock. I’ve never had that happen before with anyone.” George was twitchy and glazed with cocaine. Fortunately he hadn’t taken the mix, or they both might have been found dead by a maid in the morning.

Adrenaline still racing in his blood, Sherlock giggled and then gagged. It suddenly seemed hilarious to him that he had almost died. What would the papers make of that? Would the Palace take his body somewhere else to be found? Would they say that George had died on his boat?

And just as suddenly he wanted nothing more than to go home. All of his energy left and all he wanted to do was go home to John, curl up under his arm and never leave again.

Against the Prince’s wishes Sherlock insisted that he didn’t want to be seen by a Royal physician. He wanted to go home. A chauffeur was woken to take Sherlock back to Baker Street, but after leaving Green Park, Sherlock asked to be let out to walk to Baker Street in the early light.

The adrenaline burned in his stomach and his limbs felt loose and unconnected. One always pays for the high, he thought. There was a ringing in his ears keeping normal sounds at bay. His skin itched. His lungs and heart still seemed to be vibrating in a syncopated rhythm to match the Prince’s jazz music. He tried to smoke a cigarette but pain sliced across his chest and he put it out.

***  
He climbed the steps to their sitting room slowly, thinking of John, of everything they’d been through together, all the cases solved with John’s help. It was unlikely that he would even know the Royal Princes if not for John.

As quietly as possible he opened the door to their bedroom, wanting to check on John, but hoping he wouldn’t wake him.

“Sherlock?” John asked, voice raw with coughing. “What time is it?”

“Late. Or rather early. Go back to sleep.”

John coughed, “Did you just get home?”

“The play was awful so we went out and ended up gambling in a nightclub.”

John’s voice was chiding, “Did you win?”

He paused, “I… got in over my head…but in the end I think I broke even.”

“Thasgood,” John murmured, slipping back into sleep.

“John…I love you.”

“Come to bed then.”

“I need a bath and you need your sleep. Do you want me to bring you some tea?”

“Isalright.”

A sudden wave of love for John swept over him. For John and their life together. It made him shake or perhaps it was just the vestiges of the drugs still in his system. How foolish that he’d almost thrown it all away for an affair that could never last. Or for a high that almost killed him. What was wrong with him? Where had this self-destructive streak come from suddenly?

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: I have never injected any illegal substances into my body, let alone a Speedball, but I have read autobiographies of junkies and drew from that. Mixing cocaine and morphine has a long history (as well as killing numerous celebs more recently) and interestingly, was supposedly used to euthenize George V, Prince George's father some years later.
> 
> Important historical note! The man who would briefly become Edward VIII was known as David to friends and family. His younger brother who became George VI at Edward's abdication was actually christened Albert (known as Bertie) to appease his grandmother as he was born on the anniversary of the death of her beloved consort Prince Albert. Their youngest surviving brother was the one actually christened George and was made the Duke of Kent when he married in 1934. 
> 
> By all accounts, Prince George was a fascinating man who, after being in the Navy as was traditional for the Royal Princes, joined the Foreign Office and worked in intelligence becoming the first Royal Prince to go into civil service. Quick research says that he was bi with a long list of famous lovers, had an interest in the arts and a drug addiction.
> 
> The quote is Alexander Pope, prologue to Satires


End file.
